Hi Matt, great work! I'm sorry to hear some of the team will be laid off for a while. I visited animation building in January and could see how hard you're all working and the success from this film is well deserved. My girlfriend and I will have our tickets in December to show our support. Thanks again for all the hard work - it really shows and you can be proud of your achievements!

The animation and the background art seen in the trailer is absolutely gorgeous!

As a Classical animation enthusiast, I do have a few questions that I was hoping someone working on the film could answer for me (it's not plot or story related).

Many people on the web have commented that Tiana's mannerisms almost eerily mirror Mulans:

"I still can't get over the fact that Tiana looks like Mulan. GEEZ it's distracting!"

"[When Tiana shows up, the smile on my face is immediately inverted into a face. Why? Because I couldn't help but notice that Tiana's animation looks A LOT like another familiar character: Mulan. This could be explained by the fact that both these Disney leading ladies had the same supervising animator, the extremely talented Mark Henn, who has been working at Disney for almost 25 years. Thing is, this doesn't explain it. In my humble opinion, an animator is supposed to be able to animate each character differently, no matter how many characteristics one character might share with the other. Mulan and Tiana are both young women, thin, relatively short in stature, and the traditional "Disney Princess" prototype - but that's about it! The fact that I look at the first black female lead in a Disney feature film and think of the first asian female lead in a Disney feature film makes me think that someone was careless. With all the controversy surrounding this film, especially concerning this whole "black princess" thing, I was expecting Tiana to be a unique character, pretty much like the one I saw in the trailer a few months ago. But now,I must say I'm a bit disappointed."

"I mentioned this in a previous journal of yours, and I'll say it again: I completely agree with you about the whole Tiana-being-a-constant-throw back- to-Mulan kind of thing. What I don't understand is how nobody else has noticed it and why no one else is outraged.

At first I thought it was just the few scenes from the teaser trailer, but after seeing the whole trailer I am beyond dismayed. How could the animators at Disney let this happen? If the similarities are so obvious to my untrained-non-animator eyes, how the hell did all people working on the film miss them? (Look at 1:11, 1:16,1:18 of the trailer for just a few of the 'Mulanisms' I spotted. Maybe you'll be able to find more?)

What's worse is that there are even scenes directly lifted from other animated movies. Look at the swirl of magic at 1:47. The shape and form of the water is it magically closes in is EXACTLY (and I do mean exactly)like the shape of the water as it enveloped Odette in the Swan princess. (And while we're talking about the Swan Princess...I thought the design for the French prince Jean-Bob was far better than the one for the frog Prince Naveen).Then there's 1:59, which is eerily similar to a scene from Anastasia...but I could go on and on." Can anyone comment on this?